


Fireworks

by Yunimori



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Other, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-03 03:22:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21172607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yunimori/pseuds/Yunimori
Summary: A young Senator gets a bit more than he bargained for the first time he sees fireworks.





	Fireworks

**Author's Note:**

> I'm copying all of my Shockwave and Optimus/Shockwave ficlets and drabbles from my tumblr accounts over to my ao3 account. Most of these are going to be incredibly short (hence the drabble tag), and either in short-form format or 100 Themes Challenge format.
> 
> This is just for my own peace of mind, making sure they are safe from tumblr's random purges. 
> 
> However, feel free to read them and let me know if you enjoyed them!

He’d never seen fireworks before.

Oh sure, he’d _heard_ of them, and knew what they were – in theory – but Shockwave had never actually _seen_ them. His father, Jhiaxus (if…one could still call him that) had always forbade him from being around when the interns were working with the more volatile metals, and as he also forbade Shockwave from going out at night…well…he’d never seen them in the few times Iacon had had displays. 

Needless to say, he was curious. Jhiaxus had disappeared without a trace a few years ago, amid accusations (and far, far too much evidence) of horror-show experiments and unethical genetic alterations, and so Shockwave had no one to tell him ‘no’ this time. Really, he had everyone who could tell him _yes_ if he’d asked.

He was still leery of Vortex, it was true, but Pax trusted the museum curator; they were dear friends, and Shockwave had no real reason to believe a fireworks display in front of the museum would be a bad thing. The museum had okayed it, after all, otherwise it wouldn’t be _happening,_ right?

Which meant come nightfall, the young Senator, full of irrepressible teenaged curiosity, was moving up to the oddly-shaped containers sitting on the concrete pad in front of the Iacon Museum, tilting his head at the strange layout and the seemingly random wires and cords strung between them, seemingly without order. 

He knew better than to touch, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t _look_, and look Shockwave did, moving around the display like a cat circling a bug. He couldn’t understand why there seemed to be _electrical_ cables strung between the boxes. Fireworks started with _fire_, did they not, not an electric switch? He knelt near the back of the display, trying to follow the cabling with his eyes without getting lost in the jumble of black-snake twists and turns.

Shockwave was so absorbed in attempting to figure this out – along with _why_ the boxes were arranged without any sign of form or function – that he didn’t hear Vortex counting down over the intercom system set up. And as he was kneeling, hidden by the crowd, no one saw the short bot who was just a bit too close to some of the firework containers. 

He saw the first one go up, startling him with its loud crackle-_boom_ that lit the night sky above with a myriad of synthetic, blue-green-silver star-balls, but the second one was the last _he_ got to see…at least in color.

The eight or so seconds of timed space between the first and second displays was not enough for the little flier to get out of the way. The giant cylinder he was next to blew up just as he looked back, searing his face and temporarily deafening him with its gunpowder ignition.

No one heard Shockwave yelp above the explosions and the cheering, and no one saw him blindly scrambling away from the launching pad, scrubbing furiously to try and relieve the pain of having just had a bunch of copper and magnesium powder blow up in his face. 

He spent the rest of the show near the back of the crowd, trying to see through watery, soot-filled eyes that only let him view things in monochromatic black and white…and trying to get the black off of his face before anyone took notice of the shy bot hiding from even his few friends.

And he’d _still_ missed the fireworks.


End file.
